Now Playing: (2003, Chan-Wook Park) [seen on DVD]
Now I can see why Tarantino was such a fan- of the recent wave of revenge films, this is second only to the KILL BILL saga. This film wrung me out in several different ways- first it's harrowing with Oh Daesu (Choi Min-Sik) imprisoned without explanation Kafka-style, then kinetic as Oh Daesu is suddenly released and decides to go on a roaring rampage of revenge, and finally poignant, for reasons I'll go into here. Won't say too much more about it here, except that several scenes, notably the squid scene and the already-infamous hammer-fight, are really damn incredible. This was my first exposure to Park, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but he's completely in control of his talent here, and the film's style is exciting (I NEED to see this in a theatre).
Posted by hkoreeda
at 4:43 PM EST
